


Size Isn't Everything

by Deejaymil



Series: A Picture's Worth [6]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Gen, Has art!, Prompt Fic, Short & Sweet, Spencer is weird again, alternate universe - centaurs, and Hotch is even more intimidating when he's part horse, but Emily's always gorgeous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 02:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14487030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: Emily's never been a very good politician, but she's always been averygood centaur.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Deer In A Sweater Vest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14409339) by [blythechild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild). 



> Prompt: _Centaur AU. Bonus points if your centaurs aren't quite what people expect…_

Emily had never been a very good politician, not even when she was a filly and it was all her mother wanted her to be. When she was supposed to be quiet, she was always loud; when she was supposed to be gentle, she wanted to be rough.

No, she wasn’t very good at politics, especially not when she was young enough to be more interesting in running and playing instead. But she was _always_ a very good centaur. Black as the midnight sky with none of the stars, her coat was gleaming and glossy and her hooves were hard. She had looks to flaunt and power to spare. She wasn’t small and she didn’t want to be, because no stallion would ever tell her what to do or when.

And maybe that’s why she was so bad at politics: really, Emily just didn’t like to be controlled. No Prentiss was born to be broken.

And her life was filled with men who thought that just because they were big and strong, they could do what they wanted. Alpha males with alpha mentalities, even if they thought they were kind. Emily didn’t trust easily, and could she be blamed?

There were her parents, who scolded her for being so large and unmarelike, always too loud, too brash, too much. There were her schoolfriends, who’d teased her for much the same. Teachers who were exhausted by her need to run, to gallop with the wind in her hair and whipping at her clothes until her hindquarters were slick with sweat and she’d thrown a shoe and had to limp home. There was John, and Matthew, and everything that went wrong when she trusted a man to help her.

There was Ian Doyle with his shaggy coat and salted colouring. Blue eyes that were piercing and more dangerous than his sharp hooves. Emily ran by his side because she had to, but she didn’t like it. Lauren did, a little. After all, Lauren was a mare with nothing to lose and everything to gain, someone entirely at home in a stallion’s word. She stood as tall as Emily did, just as tall as any of the men around her, but she was happy being under them.

And Doyle liked to be in control.

There was Clyde. He was smaller than her and knew it. She loved him, in the way she loved the few people she let close, but she didn’t trust him. That wasn’t anything against him. She didn’t trust anyone.

There was Aaron Hotchner, who was impressive in every sense of the word. Just as black as she but twice as graceful, he made her feel awkward and ungainly in comparison even though they were the same size. Oddly, she trusted him.

Derek Morgan was bigger yet, but lean. His horse half was just as muscled as his human half, with nothing left to spare. Physically impressive, he walked like he knew it and that hid how keen his mind was. It pissed her off, but she never told him that because a small part of her respected him.

JJ was small, gold and white with a tail that flicked nervously even when her face was impassive. Delicate hooves that made no noise and thin, long legs to die for. Emily was immediately protective of this small, quiet mare, even though JJ didn’t need protecting. And, if JJ was a hint that size wasn’t everything—something Emily needed to learn—then there was Spencer Reid.

“What on _earth_ are you?” she’d barked with shock the first time she’d walked into the BAU and almost crashed into him. He’d given her a look that was ten times the sass something of his size should manage and tilted that strange, square face up to stare at her, arms crossed over his ridiculous sweater-vest that was too short to hide how his shirt hung loose.

“I’m Spencer Reid,” he said defensively. “Dr. Spencer Reid. Who are _you?”_

Later, she’d realise this was deliberate. Spencer hadn’t spent so long as a stag in a horse’s world without learning how to stick up for himself.

And she’d learned not to be weirded out by him. He wasn’t really small, despite only coming up to just below her shoulders—not including his antlers that were small and barely grown in. Two tines, and he always ducked his head and almost hit her with them when he got shy about them. Barely visible on his narrow rump was the suggestive shadow of fawn spots on his russet coat, his hooves even smaller than JJ’s and absolutely noiseless without shoes to give away his position. And, best of all—she’d laughed at it at first but found herself captivated by later—a tufty tail that flicked excitedly whenever he was too happy to contain his emotions.

She realised very quickly that, when it came to Spencer Reid, size wasn’t everything.

He was smarter than her, and that was a given.

He was faster than her, and that pissed her off even more than Morgan’s forced masculinity did. The first time she realised this, he saved her life. She’d fallen, hard, her foreleg folded under her and her gun out of reach. The unsub’s gun, however, was absolutely not only in reach, but aimed at her head.

And there was nothing she could do but stare him in the eyes as he went to take her life; she’d never shied away from anything in life, and she didn’t plan to start now that she was dying.

But he got there first. A clatter of delicate hooves that suddenly didn’t seem so delicate anymore and he was—of course, the little shit—between her and the gun, long, bandy legs splayed to keep him low with the bulk of her behind him as the unsub went to shoot. If it had been Morgan or Hotch, they’d have died. Too loud and big and slow; they’d never have reared in time to knock the gun away. Spencer went low and quick, antlers catching the guy right where human torso smoothly slipped into horse, lashing up and knocking the gun from his hand and leaving a slash of red in its wake.

Later, she sat with him watching the flurry of a crime scene, an orange blanket folded around each of their shoulders and nothing to say between them.

Finally, she found her voice, “Thanks,” she muttered. “Not bad for a deer with tiny antlers.”

He just grinned up at her, shrugging. “Size isn’t everything, Em.”

And this time, she believed him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: _Character A finds out that Character B has never done something that they consider a normal part of growing up._

She ran from them, because that was what Emily Prentiss had absolutely always done. Returned from the dead at first, so ready to rejoin her family, only to find that she didn’t quite fit in there anymore. Her death lingered on her human shoulders, weighing down even her equine half with the knowledge that these people had lived the grief of her loss and had no desire to live through it again. They forgave her, eventually, even Reid, but she never really forgave herself.

She supposed that was why she moved to London. It was strange over there. She’d lived in plenty of homes in her life—the Middle East, with centaurs there with striped hides or narrow, Arab lines; Italy, where they came short and shaggy but with more stamina than she’d ever had—but London was the first place she found where the melting pot of a major metropolitan centre seemed to attract those who were hardly equine in the first place. It was hard to forget the family she’d left behind when she kept accidentally bumping into deer and impala on the street, their russet hides and delicate hooves guaranteed to give her homesickness as she thought of Spencer Reid back home.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Even as she smiled at a stag on the Tube with his antlers more impressive than Reid’s had ever been, she was thinking of there as home and here as a stopgap.

Emily had always run. Always. As a child she’d galloped because she could, across any wide-open space she could find. As an adult, she fled commitment and responsibility with just as much enthusiasm. Running, she was sure, was a part of being a centaur, bred into their hearts and hooves.

Except not hers, not anymore.

So, when they called for her, she went home.

Everything was different. Hotch was gone and she stood in his place, worried that she was half the horse he’d always managed to be. JJ and Rossi were both looking older, tireder. The cases were harder, it seemed, or maybe they’d just lost something between them.

Reid was the one who startled her the most. It took her a little while to notice—she blamed the fact that she was busy and stressed and then everything in Mexico. It took bringing him home from prison and realising he was wound tight and curled up small, bottling up everything that was stressing him out. Emily fixed this the only way she knew; she took him running.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said, staring down at the grassy slopes below them. “We just… gallop? Where? Why run with no destination?”

She stared at him on the ridge of the hill, realising suddenly that he wasn’t slender or small or boyish at all anymore. His antlers had grown in, now dangerously wide with five tines to show the weight of his years on him, wide-spread and perfectly balanced in the mop his hair. His haunches were heavier, his torso folding smoothly into the muscled lines of the stag below. Sadly, his colour had settled too—the fawn spots she’d loved were now gone, his hide russet brown the whole way through. He’d always been faster than her in the time before; now, she worried that he would probably be stronger too.

He’d been forced to grow up. She didn’t know how she felt about this yet, but no one would underestimate him anymore.

“Centaurs run, Spence,” she said instead of any of this. “It’s a fundamental part of us.”

“I’m not a centaur,” he pointed out quietly, his small hooves shifting on the lawn.

She didn’t think that was true. He wasn’t so different from her, not in size or in heart. “Try it and see,” she suggested, cantering down the slope at an easy pace for him to catch up. Not running from anything, but running _with_ something: her family.

The thud of hooves sounded and he hurtled past, leaping a grassy knoll with a bound that left her breathless as he soared. There was no way she could emulate the act, not as lightly or as gracefully, but she damn well wasn’t being beaten in a race against that prong-headed Brainiac.

Except, she did. No matter how fast she ran, he was quicker, always keeping an easy length in front of her. In the end, she didn’t mind. He kept looking back at her and, every time he did, she saw a new kind of wonder in his eyes. His worries slipped from him, until they were miles away from where they started and both so exhausted all they could do was flop on the grass and think of nothing. Muddy and sweaty and done-in, the both of them.

“I missed you,” Reid murmured, tilting his head back to look up at the starts just beginning to show. She watched him, seeing the changes and seeing where he was just the same and probably always would be. Eventually, he turned his head so fast that she thought he was going to overbalance. There were leaves stuck to his antlers. She wondered if he’d let her pick them off. “Are you going to run again?” She didn’t think he was referring to this. This, she would do again—and so would he.

“No,” she promised. “I’m home now, and I’m not going anywhere.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Amazing art of deer!Spencer by Blythechild, here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14409339)


End file.
